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Mercenaries Shoot Three Civilians Including Two Women In 4th Such Shooting In A Month اصوات العراق - في الحادث الرابع خلال شهر: جرح ثلاثة مدنيين بنيران عناصر شركة أمنية قرب كركوك

English Summary:

Kirkuk, Oct 18, (VOI) – Three civilians, including two women, were wounded in a shooting by a foreign security firm in northeastern Kirkuk, a local official security source said on Thursday.
"Three civilians were injured when security company personnel opened fire on their vehicle in northeastern Kirkuk," the source, who requested anonymity, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
The wounded were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment, the source explained, providing no further information about the firm’s name or the circumstances surrounding the incident.
This comes one month after a similar shooting by the U.S. security firm Blackwater that killed 17 Iraqis in al-Nosour square in Baghdad.
Kirkuk, a mixed city of Kurds, Turkmen, Christians, and Arabs, is located 250 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Aswat Aliraq

Editor’s Note (Update 1):

Kurdish language reports say the mercenary firm is American that they opened fire on a taxi and that the two women were passengers in the taxi.

The shooting took place on the Kirkuk to Sulaimaniyah highway in the Qarahanjir district of Kirkuk city. They quote the taxi driver as saying that his car was 150 metres behind a convoy of four mercenary vehicles. That the mercenaries drove off leaving the wounded to their fate.

The wounded were taken to Azadi hospital in Kirkuk and their injuries are said to be serious according the Qarahanjir police commander.

Editor’s Note (Update 2):

Private security guards shoot three Iraqi civilians

KIRKUK, Iraq (AFP) — Guards from a private security company opened fire Thursday on a taxi that approached their convoy near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk wounding three civilians, including a woman journalist, police said.

"We didn’t identify the name of the company that carried out the shooting but there is a joint (US-Iraqi) investigation," Torhan Yusuf, the acting police chief of Kirkuk, told AFP.

It was the third such incident in little over a month after guards from US firm Blackwater killed as many as 17 civilians in a shooting on September 16 and employees of an Australian-run company shot dead two women on October 9.

"I saw a convoy of three cars pass a taxi and one of the guards took his weapon and opened fire on the taxi," said police officer Hussain Rashid.

"I tried myself to stop the convoy but they didn’t pay attention to me. They stopped about 300 metres from the scene, then they moved," he added.

The shooting happened at around 3:30 pm (1230 GMT) near the village of Qara Anjir, 30 kilometres (20 miles) east of Kirkuk, an oil rich city in northern Iraq.

Yusuf said that two men were wounded as well as the woman journalist who worked for TV Zagros, the television station of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party.

According to witnesses, the wounded journalist tried to get out of the taxi at one point but one of the guards stopped her by pointing his gun in her direction. Two other passengers in the taxi were unharmed.

Since the September 16 incident with Blackwater, several investigations have been launched into the operations of private security contractors and the Iraqi government has drafted a law that would regulate their activities.

AFP: Private security guards shoot three Iraqi civilians

 Editor’s Note (Update 3):

KIRKUK, Iraq, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Foreign private security guards opened fire on a taxi near their convoy near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Thursday, wounding three passengers, including two women, police said.

Police said it was not clear which company the guards worked for, but the incident in Qarah Anjir, 25 km (16 miles) east of Kirkuk, was under investigation.

Colonel Othman Abdullah, police chief in Qarah Anjir, told Reuters that guards in the convoy of four vehicles had sprayed gunfire into the windscreen of the taxi, wounding two sisters and a video editor for a Kurdish satellite television station.

There have been mounting calls for the Iraqi government to tighten controls on private security contractors following a Sept. 16 incident in Baghdad involving the U.S. firm Blackwater in which 17 people were killed.

The Iraqi authorities are also investigating another shooting earlier this month in which guards employed by an Australian security firm shot dead two women whose car ventured too close to their convoy.

The company said the car had failed to stop despite repeated warnings. In the Blackwater incident, the company, which is employed to protect U.S. State Department personnel in Iraq, said its guards had acted lawfully against a threat to a convoy.

On a visit to Washington, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al -Dabbagh repeated the government’s desire for Blackwater to leave the country and said all security companies should be held accountable for their actions in Iraq.

At present foreign security guards are immune from prosecution in Iraq under a controversial order issued by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004.

"We do need all the security companies to be liable and … subject to accountability," Dabbagh said. "No country in the world allows security companies to work in the way they are working in Iraq.

"We do understand that they do a good job of protecting diplomats and the contractors."

Reuters AlertNet - Three hurt as foreign guards fire on taxi in Iraq

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Indexed under: Disputed Areas, Journalists Attacked, Kirkuk, Kirkuk (At-Ta'mim) Governorate